This is a story about a pen so small that I actually lost the first one I bought (you’re welcome, cleaning people in random motel in Asheville), but so adorable that I bought another one anyway (but not so cost-effective that that was necessarily a good idea).

The American penny was just too big. Like taking pictures of the coin more than the pen.

I originally owned the silver one, but it was too much of an indignity to buy the exact same thing again, so I went with the “wine red” cap on repurchase (though I can’t say that the wine I drink ever looks this particular shade of red. I guess “fruit punch red” just doesn’t have the same classy ring to it). This pen is small. Your mind will not comprehend how small it is unless you’re holding it. You see it here, next to the 1 euro-cent, or on JetPens, next to an American quarter, and you THINK you have an idea of how small it is. You’re wrong. It’s smaller than that. You could probably swallow this pen whole and not even manage to choke on it (it’ll probably get stuck somewhere past your stomach though, so, maybe don’t do that).

You also may not realize how small one of these 1 euro cent coins is. I believe the mathematical size is referred to as “unbelievably adorable” sized.

It’s a lovely pen to look at. Slim, minimal, elegant, and well made (at its price, it had BETTER be well made). The metal cap is smooth, with a pearlescent sort of sparkle-sheen to it, and posts perfectly. The little Japanese print provides just the right amount of accent. It’s held up well so far, being tossed in at the bottom of a bag, which makes me hopeful for its potential as an everyday carry.

I think it is a universal requirement of standard ballpoints to have some crusty ink crud visible when I take its picture

It writes. Not a particularly enjoyable experience for me, writing for the duration of the writing sample; I found the lovely silver accents around the print to be a bit of a pain in the base of my thumb, and the writing felt a bit cramped with such a small and slender barrel. But it does what I would need it to do, which would be write in a moment of necessity. The smaller your hands, the more you would probably like writing with this pen. The refill itself, a Zebra 4C-0.7 ballpoint pen refill, is nothing spectacular.

IT’S LIKE THEY’RE SWIMMING IN WATER BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES

At time of writing, this wee little pen is only a dollar seventy-five shy of a full ten dollars, which seems like an awful lot of money to drop on something so little that isn’t a fountain pen. Spending absurd amounts of money on fountain pens is somehow more psychologically justifiable. It’s a pretty little pen, but if I lose it again, I probably won’t be buying a third.

Feeling restricted by Twitter, I wanted to roll out a little segment, a header under which I might categorize all my random pen/ink/paper/etc. musings, to post my write-ups that are not reviews, and can’t be expressed in 140 characters. Such meanderings shall henceforth be declared Ink Drop Soup, so if you don’t care for such ramblings, you can easily avoid them.

It's a set of keys! it's a boombox! It's a wooden bench!

One of the few good things to come out of the closing of Borders Bookstores was that, in the final going-out-of-business sales, I was at long last able to afford overpriced junk like this thing and Moleskines. I probably paid somewhere between five to nine bucks for this thing. Ah, what is this thing? It’s a boombox. No really.

This thing is the epitome of what seems like useless hipster garbage. Only it's actually useful.

First, I attached my keys to it, because I keep losing my keys. Then, I started to keep stuff in it. I’m surprised how much it holds.

The essentials: one mp3 playing unit, to plug into the boombox; one matchbook of Writersblok perforated sticky notes; one Zebra mini-pen; 8GB of memory (one of the two flash drives I use to hold all my pictures for this blog). Optional, not pictured: coins, small sewing implements, band-aid(s), stick of gum, what have you. It’s my favorite mini-arsenal that I’ve assembled so far, and is always handy wherever my keys may go.